ZOO World Cup Asia 2011

PALS World Cup Asia 2011 was hosted on the island of Langkawi, Malaysia. ZOO's lead-up preparation for the WCA was less than satisfactory, having played the last leg of the Singapore Paintball Series and not performed as we should have. This was to be our first WCA playing Division 2 and with 140 teams from 30 countries around the world playing (40 in our division alone) we were aiming for a top 16 position. Division 2 was split into 2 groups and each team would play 5 Race-to-2 matches. Our draw proved promising, playing against some local Malaysian teams, and Australian team and an all-girls international team Ladies Weakness.

Day 1 saw us drawn against Assala from Gabon in Africa and NBK from Australia. Asala were a tough team but we managed a 2-1 win over them. NBK seemed a little easier and we almost walked off the field with a 2-0 win until the head ref called a 3 for 2 penalty on us for a "game-changing playing-on penalty" - this resulted in us going back on to the field for more games, the 3rd which ended in a draw, the 4th game ended with a win to NBK drawing the teams 1-1 and the 5th ended in a draw with time running out.Day 2 had us matched against the Simpsons, Republic CMX and Ladies Weakness. We most likely only had to win two of them to progress to the final round of 16. We won our first match against The Simpsons quite convincingly which surprised us. Republic CMX proved as always tough to beat and with points drawn at 1-1, they got the better of us in the last point. In our last match of the day Against Ladies Weakness, our first point against them ended in a 1 on 1 and unfortunately we lost the point. We came back to win the second point but in the deciding point we lost too many players off the break on our dorito side and the ladies proved to be 'our weakness', ZOO losing 2-1.

Our inclusion to the top 16 would come down to the final group results. We were then to find out that the organisers had included 2 teams that hadn't even shown up to play the event and some teams in the other group were give automatic walkover wins, instead of the organisers revising the draws. This meant that some teams that had only 1 'real' win to their names were placed higher than ZOO on the rankings charts because they had additional walkover wins. We protested to PALS when we found out about these walkovers but as usual they claimed there was nothing they could do. We had missed out on making the Top 16 by 0.5 points and as a team, knew that the loss Ladies Weakness, a team with far less experience than us, was purely our own fault. Despite our disappointment we still walked away with the 'Best of Nation' trophy having been the highest ranked Singapore team at the event and ZOO finished 2nd overall in the PALS 2011 series standings. Hopefully in 2012 we can achieve better results.

Thank to my team mates who have sacrificed a lot of their own cash and many hours supporting the team's endeavors. You guys rock!!